Bob Costas, the super star of TV sportscasters, is expected to blast the lords of baseball in his first book, which he just finished writing for the Broadway Books imprint of Random House Inc.

“It will stir up a lot of debate,” predicts Charlie Conrad, vice president and executive editor of Broadway Books, which plans a huge, 250,000-copy first printing.

The book has been dubbed, “Fair Ball: A Fan’s Case for Baseball.”

It’s being billed as a “no holds barred assessment” of the “troubled state of Major League baseball,” says Conrad. It will hit on April 4 — the day after opening day of this year’s season.

“They’re hustling it out,” says the literary agent David Chalfant at International Management Group, who handled the deal. “Bob didn’t finish writing it until after the World Series.”

Costas — a mainstay of NBC Sports who has been dubbed the best sportscaster in America by Newsweek — is estimated to have received a mid-six-figure advance to write the book.

He’s built his reputation as a thoughtful sports commentator and a baseball traditionalist who has long oppossed the introduction of such modern gimmicks as the designated hitter, inter-league play and the wild card playoff system.

He also feels that the growing domination of major market teams — who don’t share box office or TV revenue with smaller cities — will have a long term disasterous impact on the game.

“This is not supposed to be big business — it’s a league sport,” says Conrad. “If the contests aren’t fair, why should people be interested in watching? How many times do we need to see the New York Yankees play the Atlanta Braves in the World Series?” asks Conrad.

Costas himself is not commenting on the contents of the book until it is published.

Says Chalfant, the literary rep at IMG who has seen the manuscript, “He doesn’t pull any puches, but he doesn’t take any cheap shots, either.”